As transformations go, the changes to Turkey’s economy following the 2001 crash were radical. A banking system that had been little more than a piggy-bank for politicians was transformed into one of the fastest-growing in the world.

In place of governments willing to throw fiscal responsibility out the window in exchange for a handful of votes, elections late in 2002 brought to power a party apparently determined to extricate Turkey from years of debilitating boom-and-bust economic cycles. Was the change of mentalities only a mirage? With political jousting between secularists and a religious-minded government showing increasing signs of spilling over into the economy, analysts increasingly fear the answer may be yes.